News & Updates

Researchers tested gene therapy in a guinea pig model of fetal growth restriction caused by placental insufficiency, which occurs when the placenta fails to provide enough oxygen and nutrients to the developing fetus. Currently, there is no treatment for this complication.

Read about select research advances supported by NICHD in 2024, including work on women’s health, child and adolescent health, medical rehabilitation, health disparities, and more.

NIH has announced finalists in its competition to accelerate the development of diagnostic and monitoring technologies to improve fetal health outcomes.

Researchers linked malformations in stillborn infants to copy number variants—lengths of DNA in which hereditary material is duplicated or deleted. What they learned could lead provide information helpful to parents and for pregnancy care.

Pregnant women who tested positive for cannabis use were at 27% higher risk for conditions related to poor placental function—including hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, stillbirth, and growth restriction relative to gestational age—than pregnant women who tested negative.

In 2023, NICHD continued its commitment to research to understand human development, improve reproductive health, promote women’s health, enhance the lives of children and adolescents, and optimize abilities for all. Highlights include steps toward reducing the global burden of maternal sepsis and establishing a standard treatment for opioid-exposed newborns.

As we ring in 2024, we’d like to take a brief look back on our accomplishments during 2023. These activities illustrate the institute’s continued commitment to research and training in its mission areas.

Each year, more than 20,000 families in the United States experience a stillbirth, the loss of a fetus at 20 weeks or more of gestation. Stillbirth is a traumatic event that takes a devastating, lifelong psychological toll on families. October marks Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, making this an opportune time to reflect on the work we must do to better understand the causes of—and ultimately prevent—these tragedies.

NIH will award up to $2 million in cash prizes as part of its Fetal Monitoring Challenge to accelerate development of diagnostic and monitoring technologies that improve fetal health outcomes in low-resource settings. U.S. scientists, engineers, and clinicians can submit innovative approaches and compete for prizes and resources to support technology development and clinical impact, with a focus on point-of-care and home-based diagnostic and monitoring technologies that may reduce fetal health risk and loss during and after birth.

A bacterial species that causes chorioamnionitis—an infection of the placenta and fetal membranes that often leads to preterm birth—relies on a gene for metal tolerance to hijack immune cells, suggests a study in mice funded by the National Institutes of Health. The findings indicate that strategies to target the gene and its products could eliminate one of the most common causes of preterm birth.

This October, NICHD celebrates its 60th anniversary and holds the first meeting of a new task force examining stillbirth in the United States. NICHD Director Dr. Diana W. Bianchi looks forward to future progress toward the institute’s goals of promoting healthy pregnancies, raising healthy children, and ensuring healthy and optimal lives.

The Division of Intramural Research provides fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems through basic, clinical, and population-based research.

Small NIH study contributes to understanding of COVID-19 during pregnancy.

Read about NICHD’s research findings and activities from 2021.

It just got easier to participate in the PregSource®: Crowdsourcing to Understand Pregnancy research project. The free app allows participants to track their weight, sleep, mood, and other features of their pregnancy in just a few taps.

An antibody treatment in early pregnancy for women infected with cytomegalovirus does not appear to reduce the risk of infection or death among their newborns, an NIH-funded study suggests. The findings contradict several smaller studies on the treatment, known as hyperimmune globulin, that suggested the treatment was effective.

Drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco cigarettes throughout the first trimester of pregnancy is associated with nearly three times the risk of late stillbirth (at 28 or more weeks), compared to women who neither drink nor smoke during pregnancy or quit both before the end of the first trimester, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The National Institutes of Health will award up to $400,000 to individuals or groups who design an effective method for analyzing a large data set of first-time pregnancies and identifying risk factors for adverse outcomes, such as hypertensive disorders, diabetes and infection. A total of $50,000 will be awarded to each of seven winners designing the most effective means to analyze the data. An additional $10,000 will be awarded to the top five winners whose methods identify risk factors in disadvantaged populations.

NICHD Director Dr. Diana Bianchi is joined by NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health Director Dr. Janine Clayton in assessing the growing maternal health crisis in the United States and describing NIH’s efforts to address it.

Pregnant women need to be protected through research rather than from research, the authors contend.